CURRENT research THRUSTS

Main focus: This research thrust focuses to reduce the global burden of disease through the prevention and control of chronic diseases related to lifestyle. The research line has a specific focus on low-resourced settings.

Main focus: This research thrust will focus on injuries and illness prevention in community sports people through accurate monitoring and surveillance. Although this prevention is focused on all illnesses and injuries, this research line has a particular focus on head injuries including sport-related concussion.

Main focus: The main focus of this thrust includes longitudinal injury and illness surveillance in Para athletes, biomechanics and function in amputees, athletes with brain injury (cerebral palsy) and the psychological aspects of participating in physical activity for individuals with impairment

Main focus: This research thrust aims to investigate the risk factors associated with illness (specifically non-communicable) and illness in the student, staff and sporting population on a university campus and surrounding schools. Furthermore, this thrust aims to address these risk factors in an attempt to prevent injury and illness.

Main focus: The main thrust of this research line focuses on monitoring training load and recovery, establishing early markers of fatigue and overreaching and developing novel concepts and tools for how these markers can be used to fine-tune and optimize training prescription. In addition, research within this thrust focuses on the effect of fatigue on changes in running biomechanics in relation to risk of injury and overarching and overtraining.

Main focus: The main thrust of this research line is healthy aging in special population groups, such as adults with cerebral palsy and HIV encephalopathy. The main person running these studies is Dr Nelleke Langerak, who works at the Division of Neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Most projects within this thrust are collaborative projects with the Division of Neurosurgery at UCT and the Division of Orthopaedic Surgery at Stellenbosch University.